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"What is rational for individuals leads collectively into a cul-de-sac.. The fundamental error is that economic policy believes the crisis can be fought with the logic of a family budget. For that reason, the collapse of the euro zone threatens. Measures that restore trust in the future of the euro zone are necessary now.."

"The Occupy movement protests worldwide against the power of banks. The Indignados in Spain demonstrate against the system that gives them this crisis and high unemployment.. No saying has been criticized more vigorously than Margaret Thatcher's sentence that there is "no alternative" to the present system."

"The Commons is a way of reproducing society that opposes the market logic, puts in question private property, profit and competition and points to a future form of society beyond capitalism.. The Commons is not the solution but the change of perspectives that makes possible new solutions."

"A seeming consensus among economists can virtually force the shaping of political opinions.. For 30 years, neoliberalism marginalized all other schools, above all Keynesianism, - and all of us hit a brick wall.. We must adjust for economic crisis years and for an epoch of indissoluble tensions, for confusion and trench warfare."

"The first step toward public ownership is recognizing that it is not the radical departure most imagine it to be. Two of the most cost-effective health providers in the United States—one a far-reaching insurance system, Medicare; the other a direct hands-on healthcare delivery system, the Veterans Administration—are run by the government."

The Portland Harbor Superfund Site feasibility study released last [month] by the Lower Willamette Group (LWG) proposes a range of clean-up options by the parties responsible for the contamination in the Willamette River and marks a major milestone in the Superfund process, the Yakama Nation says.

The embedding of the market and the economy in the civil society is the problem of the 21st century. Tax havens or shelters in Liechtenstein and Switzerland must be closed. The wealthiest 400 Americans have more wealth than 150 million people. Time for Plan B, alternative economics, reduced working hours, community centers, labor-intensive work and infrastructures.

The crisis was born when Maggie Thatcher and then Bill Clinton deregulated the financial markets. The explosive force that was detonated was incalculable. Economics indirectly gave support because it provides models according to the motto: financial markets are never susceptible to crises. The banks function like clock work.

Solidarity, social justice and sharing open doors while deregulation and trickle-down mythology lead to exploding inequality and generalized insecurity. Finance market capitalism is the result of speculation and government collusion. Karl Marx asked why capitalism cannot solve poverty, unemployment and exploitation. Happy May Day!

The rights of businesses in exploiting resources end in the rights of nature according to the constitution of bien vivir. This understanding of the person-nature relation surpasses the rationalist model of rule over nature realized in capitalism's globalized praxis. Article 395 of Ecuador's constitution insists the state guarantees a sustainable development model.

Economic ethics involves economic policy and fairness and goes beyond business ethics, profit maximization and shareholder value. We face an inept and corrupt political-economic system that converts private losses into public losses, represses alternatives, normalizes speculative fraud, bank bailouts, endless wars and turns education from a right to a privilege.

Sahra Wagenknecht is the leader of the Left party, Die Linke, in the German Bundestag and author of "Freedom Instead of Capitalism." Learning from other cultures is a strength, not a weakness. The University of British Columbia had a tuition freeze for 6 or 7 years and kept tuition at around $2300. Forever Number One is also a black hole of the global economy.

Portland Solidarity Network's campaign for Gary and Julie Frost - 'Home Forward is Home Backward' is putting out the call for another picket outside Home Forward's offices at 135 SW Ash Street, tomorrow, Thursday March 29th at 12 noon.

The economy should be a part of life, not a steamroller crushing creativity and se;f-determination. The economy should serve humankind; humanity should not serve the market. Once speculation was 90% productive; now investment is 90% speculative. Wages are not only a cost factor; wages are also demand and purchasing power. Can politics and policy reverse speculative investment?

In the crisis, there was a paradigm based on the belief in unlimited economic growth on a planet with infinite resources. This paradigm identifies happiness with wealth, well-being with accumulation of material goods and progress with consumerism. The logic of accumulation is more authoritarian than all dictatorial systems in history.

"Europe faces the choice of falling apart in the crisis or taking steps to another economic model," 50 scholars from the advisory board of Attac Germany declared. They make the connection between the chaos of the financial markets and the scandalous distribution of wealth in Europe. The will to force different rules on capitalism could be the foundation.

"There is no society. There are only individual men and women," said the Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher. Margaret Thatcher, former British Prime Minister, had a great share in that crisis in which Europe, capitalism and democracy find themselves. Democracy conforming to the market is the problem. The market conforming to democracy is the solution.

Newspapers were highly political. Those in favor of secession of the slave states were suppressed. They were put out of business. Lincoln was a Republican. Most of the suppressed editors returned to their profession. In their histories, neither Robert Chandler nor George Turnbull report any imprisonment of Oregon editors; the punishment was limited to suppression from the mails.

Greetings. I write from Niles, Ohio, near Youngstown. I take part in Occupy Youngstown (OY). I was asked to make some "keynote" remarks on the occasion of OY's first public meeting on October 15, 2011. I am a member of the legal team that filed suit after our tent and burn barrel were confiscated on November 10-11. I am helping to create the OY Free University where working groups explore a variety of future projects.

The civilization made and guided by men seriously threatens survival on the earth. The song of Christmas is not a sweet lullaby but a feminine rebellion against the world of death worshipers. The gifts of this earth do not belong to us. The people of another time will also want to live from them. To survive, we need persons born on Christmas, a civilization of the beloved.

"There is a beautiful fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen where the devil builds a mirror that distorts everything beautiful and good into nothing. The most glorious countrysides appear like boiled spinach, the best persons are repulsive or without torsos.. This mirror cancels the creation itself. I asked myself whether or not Andersen meant scientific reason."

Police want to fight. It's a cold, cold night. The people stand up to a jeering cop, "you're breaking my heart", he points to the one he will be arresting when he gets his chance -- posse comitatus. Indefinite detention, it's a time of war. But the war is over just in time for it to really begin. Coordinated attacks, as it all slips back into the sands of time. Another grand defeat, now Iraq is Iran, majority rule, so we gather on a cold, cold night.

Dorothee Soelle combined political activism and mysticism, unconventional thinking and passion for life. In this epilogue written by her partner, the theologian and former Benedictine monk Fulbert Steffenksy, reveals the feistyness and childlikeness of the liberation theologian and poetess Dorothee Soelle. The ego must die for the self to be born.

The Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman wrote: "In a free economic system, there is only a single responsibility for the actors. Businesses must be carried out for the greatest possible profitability." To believers in the self-healing market, questions about guilt, humility and pangs of conscience must sound like questions from another world.

Sorry, but President Barack Hussein Obama gets my everlasting praise and certainly my vote for re-election next year. And all my holier-than-thou, Obama-is-no-better-than-Bush comrades can just lean over and kiss my working-class Left-of-Lenin ass right where the sun don't shine. Grow up, you contemptible idiots.

When Questlove of The Roots chose to introduce Michele Bachmann's appearance on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon with a few chords from punk band Fishbone's "Lyin' Ass Bitch," he was going for an easy joke. But true Fishbone fans, while elated that the fading, three-decade-old band was experiencing a pop cultural revival (and new dowloads) were also aware that "Lyin' Ass Bitch" was one of the less political songs of an extremely political band.

Since Occupy Wall Street began, American police officers have arrested thousands of people for exercising their constitutionally protected right to protest. On Monday or Tuesday, the US Senate will vote on a bill that would give the President the ability to order the military to arrest and imprison American citizens anywhere in the world for an indefinite period of time.

Capitalism is at an end and the whole world is drawn into the mess. Preventing this is an ethical imperative and a political duty. Losses are nationalized; profits are privatized. The multiple crisis has dragged on for years. The political class allows this to happen. Political answers to the debacle can only be found when there is clarity about the causes of thecrisis.

This is for a special song singer who was marching on the East Side Wednesday. You were riding a bike and singing revolutionary songs. I was marching around dressed in all-black. We started to sing Bella Ciao together but forgot some of the lyrics and then the cops were being a douche so we split up. Since we forgot, here they are, not the Italian version but the Chumbawamba version. Cheers to all the partisans, I hope to see you in hell.

The acquisition and accumulation of wealth are based on many natural and social conditions. Many societies and generations worked so today's possibilities of acquisition exist. General civilization techniques and cultural talents grew over centuries. The so-called performance justice is often only a veil for great injustices.

"The commons is an old value that's resurfacing as a fresh approach to twenty-first-century crises such as escalating economic inequality, looming ecological disruption and worsening social alienation.
In essence, the commons means everything that belongs to all of us, and the many ways we work together to use these assets to build a better society."

The discovery of oil in Texas in the late 19th century made a small group of men a great deal of money. They decided to join together in order to maintain their profits. This included strategies for keeping the price of oil as high as possible.

Economists are compared with astrologers and mocked as crystal-ball readers because they are frequently way off the mark with their growth forecasts. Mainstream economic theory entrenched itself behind a model world and often faded out reality. The macro-economic models are largely responsible for the crisis, says Nobel Prize winner for economics Joseph Stiglitz.

The capitalism of hopelessness is a capitalism where the enemy is lost, where it cannot fulfill its promises of prosperity for the people as in the 1960s and where it sucks up and neutralizes all utopian energy and alternatives in the universe of ideas like a black hole. Public jobs must be created when the private sector sits on $2 trillion and refuses to create family-wage jobs.

Will Kaufman takes a look at folk singer Woody Guthrie's political activism throughout the Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War, the Korean War, the McCarthy era, and the Civil Rights era. The singer-songwriter is best known for his song, "This Land Is Your Land." This event was hosted by Barnes & Noble Booksellers in New York City.

A discontinuance of debt-financed economic programs leads to an economic slack period resulting in stagnation and recession. Crisis policy finds itself in a philosophical paradox. The political class can only choose between further indebtedness up to state bankruptcy (with hyper-inflation) or harsh austerity programs leading to deflation spirals in recession.

The financial crisis has turned into a state debt crisis. "The rise of democracy was not possible without the social and legal civilizing of capitalism.. The deregulation euphoria of democratic governments made possible the incredible ascent of the financial oligarchy. Pragmatically camouflaged, privatization and deregulation gained the power of dogmas."

Social security is life and death for millions. Raising the cap from $106K would make social security solvent for 75 years. The president needs to resist the rightwing, raise revenue, strengthen the infrastructure and create jobs.

"Free trade regimes have become charters of rights and freedoms for the corporation.. Free trade is the policy of the powerful after they have become powerful. The German economist Frederick List spoke of `the kicking away of the ladder.'.. Out of contradiction comes creativity.. Trade has transformed economics and societies. It is time that trade itself was transformed."

Tax cuts for the super-rich and corporations promised economic growth and more jobs but produced exploding inequality and generalized insecurity. The US faces a revenue crisis and a war spending crisis. The massive US deficit was caused by Bush tax cuts, the wars against Iraq and Afghanistan, state bailouts of banks and firms and suppression of alternative economics.

A worldwide economic and financial order decays to a pure end-in-itself and no longer serves people. A system based on an ideology in which everything-even the person-becomes a product and money is represented as the measurement for all products is legitimated by apologists who trivialize the most blatant derailments of social life as "normal."

"Five months into the bombing campaign, it is no longer possible to believe the initial official version of the events and the massacres attributed to the "Gaddafi regime". Moreover, it is now essential to take into account Libya's legal and diplomatic rebuttal..."
Thierry Meyssan is a French intellectual and founder of the Voltaire Network.

States lent money to banks at near zero interest and borrowed it back.
Trillions to speculators and financiers and nothing to everyone else!
The financial sector must be shriveled. Once it represented 15% of the economy and now is nearly 40%. Once 90% of investment was productive; now 90% of investment is speculative. The real economy falls by the wayside.

Unlike the chair, an idea can be shared by a whole people. For the first time, readers or receivers can be senders. Access can replace excess, sharing and community can replace capital and profit. Capitalism and the imploding private sector is not the end of history.

The financial crisis mutates into a worldwide economic crisis. Corporate fraud, regulatory failure and expansion of the financial sector lead to the atrophy of public spirit. Harry Hopkins and FDR created 4 million jobs in two months. In Germany, the GDP rose 300% in two decades with 20% fewer workers.
Work must be redefined and shared. Productivity gains must be shared.

Service, according to the gospel of Limbaugh, is for suckers, for society's "losers," for people who have committed crimes. In other words, it should be viewed as punishment rather than as something to be applauded and encouraged. To do for community is a fool's errand.

"The anti-government activist Grover Norquist has told a similar story from childhood, in which his father would steal bites of his ice cream cone, labelling each bite "sales tax" or "income tax." The psychological link between a certain form of childhood deprivation and extreme libertarianism awaits serious study."

The economy should be a part of life, not a steamroller crushing creativity and self-determination. The economy should be embedded in society; society should not be privatized or confiscated by the economy. Capitalism has many forms from predatory capitalism to a regulated and restrained capitalism. The public sector should be expanded. Community centers are vital.

Despite the ravings of religious zealots, The reverse side of the Great Seal of the United States displays the subconscious dream of the Founders- A New Age of Peace Among Men. It was kept from public display until this century by forces opposed to it's talismatic power.

Anarchists try to identify power structures. They urge those exercising power to justify themselves. Then anarchists work at unmasking and mastering the structures, whether they involve patriarchal families or a Mafia international system in the private tyrannies of the economy, the corporation. Links to videos of R Hahnel, M Milstein and M Albert.

Media theory starts from the idea that a changed media technology also changes society and builds new communities. The state is the spoils of the parties and the parties are the spoils of the banks. Power starts from financial management, not from the people. For the first time, readers or recipients can also be senders. The net expands democracy.

"This is a sincere call for an American Revolution against the decadent, vile plutocrats driving our nation into the ground.. Every politician in office today, Democrat and Republican alike, accepts corporate bribes and is therefore corrupt.. The precedent of our own history grants us the right to revolt."

You cannot have both democracy and concentration of wealth, Justice Brandeis warned. 20% of military spending is for defense; the rest is for empire. Arms corporations are so proficient they can force their will on Congress and an experienced executive. Endless war is not a future but the denial of a future. To Hitler, the soldier was the only model of courage.

The Warsaw Pact dissolved. Now NATO should also disappear.. Higher armaments have never led to a lasting peace order. There is an inner connection of capitalism and war which should be made clear again and again. The connection between capitalism, crisis and war was and is never as linear as assumed. Capitalism and profit do not automatically lead to war. War is always made.

The stubborn Basel businessman Georg Hasler has a new economic system in mind. He joins two economic concepts that are often discussed these days: unconditional basic income and a radical change of property rights in ideas called free knowledge. Unlike a chair, an idea can be shared by many, even by a whole society.

The religious faith that markets will sort everything out and are efficient (cf. Joseph Stiglitz) is overthrown. Enron, Tepco and the trillions to Wall Street banks show that business undermines democracy and markets. Like propaganda and public relations, business does not seek enlightened consumers making rational choices but unenlightened consumers making irrational choices

"Governments far from being the cause or instrument of order often represent its destruction." Paine unmasked the strategy of governments of implanting hatred against other people in their subjects to wage war. The person is not an enemy of people except through the mediation of a false misguided government system.